As the use of personal video recorders (PVRs) enables television viewers to time-shift their viewing behavior, advertisers can be less and less certain that their spots are reaching their intended audience, since the natural inclination for most people is to skip over commercials when viewing recorded programs. As viewers become more and more accustomed to commercial-free viewing, the tendency not to watch commercials will be reinforced. Instead, viewers surf between different channels when advertisements are displayed on a channel being viewed or use PVRs to record programs so that commercials can be skipped.
Viewers don't dislike commercials per se as much as they dislike having commercials foisted upon them. Thus, given the chance to avoid viewing a commercial, most viewers will do just that, even though many commercials are informative, entertaining, and relevant. Television viewers frequently walk away from commercials, fail to pay attention, or change channels.
Advertisers spend a lot of money to buy commercial time within shows, time-slots, and networks in order to target a particular type of audience, but these days they have little assurance that anyone is viewing their advertisements and virtually no feedback on what advertisements actually get viewed. Advertisers would benefit from a way to guarantee that advertising content is reaching its intended audience despite the fact that commercials are being skipped over at an ever-increasing rate. In addition, advertisers would benefit from having knowledge about the reach of advertising content.
A need exists for a method and system to reduce the annoyance factor of commercial viewing while ensuring that commercials are viewed instead of being skipped.